MetLife Wise to Sell Brokerages

The insurance firm said it would sell Tower Square Securities and Walnut Street Securities to focus on its own distribution network.

Snoopy, MetLife's (silent) spokesperson, always begins his novels with the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night." Yet, it is a much more prosaic event—the insurance firm's sale of two independent broker-dealer affiliates— that have investors rattled Friday.

Before the opening bell, MetLife (ticker: MET) said it planned to sell Tower Square Securities and Walnut Street Securities to Cetera Advisor Networks, a unit of privately held Cetera Financial Group. As of the end of last year, the two New York-based...